


History Will Be Kind To Me (For I Intend To Write It)

by prouvairablehulk



Series: sidere mens eadem mutato [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Sydney Uni AU, University Professors AU, well more accurately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 14:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7318717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairablehulk/pseuds/prouvairablehulk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m being serious, Len. Sharing is caring, and I need to threaten the New York DA’s office into typewriting their records.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	History Will Be Kind To Me (For I Intend To Write It)

**Author's Note:**

> so I tossed a bunch of ideas at Joker-Mom and this is the first part of the result. Len and Mick’s department and the University they work at is based on the history department at Sydney Uni, which I basically grew up in because my father worked there. Extra thanks to the Scarlet Mom for the photoset she made for this.

“Len, if the remarkable accuracy in your articles is a result of having a time machine stashed somewhere and you aren’t sharing, we are going to have words.”

Len Snart looks over the shoulder of the undergrad he’s currently talking to and takes in Jefferson Jackson where he leans against the frame of Len’s office door. Jax is carrying the largest cup of carry-out coffee Len has ever seen in his life and has the beaten-up leather messenger bag he inherited from Len slung over his shoulder. The worn-in too-big flannel shirt he’s wearing is definitely one of Mick’s, which means Jax hasn’t gone home in the last 24 hours, and that looks like a fresh hickey blooming on the younger man’s neck. There are also bags under his eyes the size of traveling trunks and he looks about two minutes away from committing murder. 

“I’m being serious, Len. Sharing is caring, and I need to threaten the New York DA’s office into typewriting their records.”

Len smirks, and then tries to school his face into something more neutral as the undergrad wilts in fear. It’s not like he tries to be scary - he really doesn’t know where the “Captain Cold” nickname picked up traction. Mick just laughs any time he tries to talk about it, and Lisa gets that smug smile on her face that firmly implies that she is a major factor in whatever happened. 

“No, Jax, I don’t have a time machine. Ask Hunter. If anyone in the department has a time machine, it will be Hunter.” 

The poor undergrad’s eyes widen as Jax leans back into the hallway.

“ARE YOU HIDING A TIME MACHINE IN THE PARKING LOT, HUNTER?” Jax yells, and then takes a long sip of his coffee. 

“OF COURSE NOT, MR. JACKSON.” comes Hunter’s snappish reply, and Jax quirks an eyebrow as though waiting for something. 

“That’s exactly what someone who was hiding a time machine in the parking lot would say.” drawls Hex, as he passes down the hall. 

“JONAH! STOP ENCOURAGING THEM!” roars Hunter in response, before the hallway echoes with the sound of his office door slamming. Jax grins bright like sunshine, and flops into the huge wingback chair in the corner of Len’s office that he’s claimed as his own. Fifteen minutes later, after Len’s talked out the essay with the wide-eyed undergrad and ushered her out the door with a hot chocolate to calm her nerves (unwittingly cementing his place as her favorite professor ever), he turns back to find Jax pulling a face at his laptop screen and mouthing swear words as he continues to try and transcribe the documents. It’s three in the afternoon, and Len can guarantee that Jax has forgotten to eat up until this point, regardless of the coffee he’d been drinking. 

“Come on, kid, we’re going to get something to eat.” 

“But transcription -” says Jax.

“But nothing. Food. We’ll just pop to Manning and back.”

Jax gives Len the kind of suspicious look that means he knows Len is “doing the dad thing again”, as he puts it, but closes his laptop and heads for the door. Mick meets them at the top of the stairs with a broad grin, and steers Jax ahead of them with a broad hand on his shoulder. Somehow, the trip ends with Jax and Len standing on the boulders outside the front entrance to their building and attempting to push each other off with umbrellas volunteered by passing students while Len buries his face in his hands and gives up on even trying to make them stop. It’s not until Hunter comes through the doors that either of them will get down.

***

“I love Len and Mick. Really, I do. But if I have to spend one more day transcribing DA records I am going to commit murder.” 

“Don’t commit murder.” says Jesse, with all the seriousness of someone who is so drunk that aiming for sober means you overshoot by a mile. Wally puts the new round of beers down on the table and slides another down to her with a grate of glass on rough wood. Jesse is working on her, like, fifth degree in something science-y that Jax definitely can’t explain while drunk under Hartley Rathaway, and Wally’s engineering project is under Cisco Ramon; the three of them had bonded over having frankly insane advisors at the Manning Bar at the end of their first week of their first year, back when the Manning Bar still existed, and now they were living together and had a Friday night drinking tradition. Below them, on King Street, the traffic rumbles in starts and stops. 

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t commit murder.” says Jax, waving his arms expansively over the railing of the Newtown Hotel’s balcony. 

“You’ll miss Mick’s annual “we’re the only patriots in the godforsaken corner of the world” Fourth of July barbecue.” says Wally, with more conviction than Jax thinks he will ever be capable of. Wally is a great believer in Mick’s Fourth of July barbecue, even if his only excuse for going is that he’s been Jax’s plus one for the last three years. Jesse gets her own invite, because Len loves anyone who is doing it for themselves, and Jesse is the poster child for doing it for yourself. 

“Can’t do that.” says Jesse, scrunching her nose up in the ridiculously adorable way she only ever does when she’s drunk. “Mick’s good at barbecuing.”

“Mick’s good a a lot of things.” says Jax firmly, and then frowns at the traffic light across from them. “We should get food.” 

“There’s a restaurant here, Jax.” 

“Cheap food.” 

They end up wobbling their way to Clem’s Chicken and then sitting on the bar stools there while they eat chips and chicken strips, Jax mostly propped on Wally’s shoulder and Jesse attached to Wally’s back in a permanent piggyback until there’s a seat available. It’s almost midnight when they get back to their apartment and they fall asleep in a pile on the sofa until the light from the window wakes them in the morning. 

***

“I am going to commit murder.” growls Mick Rory, and lesser men would believe him.

Jax and Len are laughing at him from the kitchen, and they don’t even have the decency to be subtle about it. 

“Why did I marry you again? And I’m revoking that adoption, Jefferson.”

“Ooooh, the full name, I’m so scared.” 

Mick glares at the two of them and looks back at the essays he’s grading. 

“Honestly, would it kill them to answer the question?” 

Len starts laughing again, and Jax takes another swig from the beer in his hand. Just another evening in the Snart-Rory household, then. Mick and Len had met after being hired at roughly the same time, spent a year and a half being snarky to each other at Department meetings and seminars, and then had some truly spectacular angry sex after the Mardi Gras parade, confessed to something approximating romantic feelings over french toast at Sofia’s the next morning, and never looked back. Their medievalist, Sara Lance, always looked ridiculously smug whenever their relationship was brought up in conversation, mostly because she claimed responsibility for that first round of angry sex. Now, their relationship consisted mostly of mutual bitching about grading, passive-aggressive lecture-hall booking, and being mutually snarky about other people during department meetings. 

They also ended up with kids. Not real kids, but other members of the junior faculty that they felt compelled to look after. First and foremost was Lisa, Len’s little sister, the one ardent feminist in the philosophy department who would willingly go toe-to-toe with the private school boys sweeping through on their way to Law degrees for daddy’s firm. It didn’t stop there, however. No, there was Axel, from Chem, and Shawna, who was in the Med program, and Mark the Associate Professor Meteorologist and Hartley, from the physics department. And then Jax. Brilliant, clever Jax with his perfect dissertation plan and his sharp sense of humor. Jax who had dinner at their place more often than not, Jax who wore Mick’s clothes because they were “safe and comfortable”, Jax who accused Len of “being Dad-ish again” with a grin twisting his features. There were three people Mick would make the word burn for - the first was Lenny, the second was Lisa, and the last was Jax. But this life, this world, didn’t necessitate such violent action, and Mick could just be content to watch Len and Jax riff back and forth about race politics and Lisa throw popcorn at the television whenever politicians she disliked appeared on the news. 

Now if he could just get his students to answer the goddamn motherfucking question.


End file.
